I am 18 years old and have an 1800 chess rating (USCF). My fiancee is interested in learning chess and I do have three years of teaching experience; however, I have only taught intermediate students. What are some effective strategies for teaching a beginner so that she may, say, reach an 800 rating in one year?
Most instructors teach beginners in this order.
1) How to set up the board. White on right, tallest pieces in the middle. Queen’s dress matches her shoes. Ranks and files not rows and columns.
2) How the pieces move (some cover en passant and when you can’t castle later) How much they’re worth.
3) Demonstrate overkill mates to reinforce how the pieces move and what check and checkmate are. (Q+K, R+R+K)
4) Then you can set up the board and lightly talk about what each piece likes. Pawns don’t like doubled, backward, like abreast etc. Rooks open files, kings safety, centralized knights, etc etc
5) Simple tactics such as double attacks pins and skewers nothing like deflection sacs or zugzwangs, that junk.
6) Basic strategy like development, castling, and control the center.
This doesn’t have to be all in one day of course.
Drills
you can do usually involve you taking the weaker side of an overkill mate or an overwhelmingly lost position where you’ll emphasize how the pieces have to work together. For example you get a king and two pawns vs their king, rook, and two pawns and they have to win (beginners usually check you like crazy and can’t figure it out) This lets them feel like they’re making good moves (they are) and it’s a thrill to get to beat you
When playing a real game
don’t let them win, I find it’s demoralizing to the beginner because they know you weren’t playing for real. Don’t crush them either! I generally develop all my pieces then look around for something to attack. A few times I was caught passing up a mate and had to pretend I had missed it and got a dirty look :p
Praise good moves such as developing and castling. Don’t point out all the errors. Whey they look like they’re lost on what to do you can ask them what they’re thinking and then tell them some of the basic things you see the position. If they make a bad move after that don’t necessarily have them take it back, at least not over and over.
An adult who’s learned how the pieces move, shown basic tactics and development would be rated about 1000 IMO — getting to 800 in a year should be very easy esp. with an instructor e.g. yourself.